Office equipment has long been an inviting target for thieves. It is generally unitary in construction, compact in design, and except for serial numbers indistinguishable from a multitude of similar articles. As such, if it can be stolen without exposure to risk which too greatly exceeds the anticipated reward, it will be taken. The approach to establishing the risk/reward ratio as perceived by the thief classically relates to the time it takes him to complete the theft and escape without capture, and to the condition of the article after it is stolen.
Generally a theft must be completed within about 5 minutes if the thief is to avoid substantial risk of encounter with the police. Alarmed premises, and even many premises which are not alarmed, will frequently enough have a police response within about 5 minutes and this serves to limit the thief to that length of time. If it were to take more than about five minutes to free the article to be stolen, then generally the article would be safe, or such has been the conventional belief.
Similarly, it has been the accepted concept that the stolen article must not be appreciably damaged. For example, a typewriter with a badly broken frame would not generally be accepted by a fence. Nobody would want it. Therefore, a security means which would require serious damage--perhaps by deformation or fracture--for removal, would be sufficient. Security devices have long been designed with the above criteria in mind. Indeed these criteria remain controlling for many or even most products in many areas, and products designed with them in mind continue to give value and enjoy wide acceptance.
The foregoing assumptions have recently been challenged by some surprisingly aggressive tactics, in which the attacks on the security device are so strong as not only to challenge the properties of the security device itself, but also to inflict damage onto the protected article which previously would have been unacceptable. As a consequence, damage to cases, enclosures, and even to some circuitry, apparently have become tolerable for certain expensive articles, because the remaining undamaged parts of the article will have enough value in themselves to be worth stealing.
Also, some new equipment to be protected has been designed so that partial disassembly is possible even while in a protected configuration. One example is a well known computer whose enclosure is readily replaced by that of a clone. The value resides in the circuit boards within it, and other internal parts, which apparently are marketable in and of themselves. The insides of the computer can be separated from the case by removing a few cap bolts and sliding them out of the case, sometimes past any restraint. It does little good to hold down the outside case if the internal parts can be slid out the rear simply by removing a few nuts or bolts. Hand held battery operated torque tools are a sufficient match for that restraint.
To complicate matters further, many users of equipment are reluctant to mount their equipment permanently, or even semipermanently, to a part of the security device. For example, some users prefer not to adhere their equipment to a security plate by adhesive means, or even by threaded joinders.
It is an object of this invention to provide security means that can frustrate removal even of articles which are not bonded or threadedly joined to the security device, and to do so in such a way as to frustrate or at least greatly to delay removal by means such as disassembly or strong deformation, as might be exerted by a crowbar for example.
In addition to attaining the above objectives, it is an object of this invention to overcome certain troublesome properties of known security devices in which a shear-like movement that involves the entry of heads of a plurality of couplers is facilitated so that they enter respective slots simultaneously or not at all, and can not overtravel. As a consequence, the assembly of the device into its security alignment, and its disassembly from it, are importantly facilitated.